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Programming Entertainment Games IT Technology

Free Sound Samples? 79

Posted by Cliff from the if-the-rappers-can-do-it dept.
TwistedSquare asks: "I like to write small games from time to time, and have often wondered about adding sounds. Searching around on the internet, I can find loads of GPL sound libraries but no sound effects/samples that are both royalty-free and free (as in beer). Can anyone suggest how I could find such effects and does anyone else find it odd the contrast between the amount of GPL software and non-GPL-type items in areas such as sound effects?"
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Free Sound Samples? More

Free Sound Samples?

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  • Simple (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_other_one ( 178565 ) * on Thursday September 25, 2003 @12:53AM (#7052189) Homepage
    Use a microphone and an audio recording device.
    To sample the sound of a person falling use a strategically placed bannana peel.
    The sound of an automobile accident can be generated by using a wrench to unbolt a stop sign.
    The sound of spectacular space battle explosion can be created by unplugging the microphone.

    • Re:Simple (Score:3, Funny)

      by ONOIML8 ( 23262 )
      In space they can't hear your sound effects anyway so unplug the speakers too.
    • I once recorded a kickass error sound by placing my microphone next to a floppy drive and accessing it with no disk inside.

      I'm currently trying to get the method patented.
    • "The sound of an automobile accident can be generated by using a wrench to unbolt a stop sign."

      The sound of the Millineum Falcon's failing Hyperdrive can be recreated by getting your webserver slashdotted.

  • Cause the effects business is big (Score:3, Informative)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @12:54AM (#7052191)
    And everybody seems to need a custom sound.

    For some effects, all you need is the item (horn, siren, wind) and a recording studio. Those are the canned effects. Most efects are auditioned. All I can say is they're expensive.

  • Be Creative (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mcdrewski42 ( 623680 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @12:54AM (#7052198)
    I have sat through hours of DVD extras and have come to the conclusion that sound effects are done from scratch by sound gurus for every single movie. It's almost like professionals ALSO don't have a huge library to draw upon.

    Ok, so maybe they don't do it from scratch every time, but they always talk about how they record everyday sounds and modify them, from swooshes for punching to clangs and ching sounds etc. I'm sure for a few dollars you can record your own high-quality sounds. Look at the "inside the matrix" DVD for one guy who describes the sound made by the keanu power-plant sphincter door (the one that keanu is 'flushed' through') as a 'choonk'ing sound comprising a heap of different sounds, everything from a tyre iron hitting an empty tire to a wet fish hitting a bench.

    Try a search for 'foley' for a host of groovy techniques to make sounds.

    • Re:Be Creative (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ibennetch ( 521581 )

      I have sat through hours of DVD extras and have come to the conclusion that sound effects are done from scratch by sound gurus for every single movie. It's almost like professionals ALSO don't have a huge library to draw upon

      Part of the reason professionals recreate sound effects from scratch almost every time is because they want them to match their situation exactly, ie one movie may have 12 cars piling up on top of each other in a scene that takes 15 seconds, a different movie may have 15 cars taking 1

    • a wet fish hitting a bench --- ?!

    • Except... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zonix ( 592337 )
      I have sat through hours of DVD extras and have come to the conclusion that sound effects are done from scratch by sound gurus for every single movie. It's almost like professionals ALSO don't have a huge library to draw upon.

      Well, except for that trademark explosion sound you hear in almost all eighties action movies and TV series. And the Dirty Harry Magnum gun too, I think. You all know what I'm talking about, right? :-)

      z
      • And that motorized-door-opening noise that's used just about everywhere...
        • Yes.. Yes.. I was just about to mention that. I first heard it in Starcraft as the thing when the seige tank goes into seige mode. Since then I have heard it dozens of times and it always reminds me of Starcraft.
    • I got a kick out of the "Sound Effects" part of the FOTR extended DVD. They were talking to one of the sound engineers about making the sound effects for the watcher, right before the Fellowship enters the caves of Moria.

      The engineer said that a large part of the watcher sound came from him playing around with a toilet plunger in a creek by his house.

      Just struck me funny.
    • For the most part, yes, sound effects are recorded for each movie.

      HOWEVER, am I the only one that notices that damn vault-door squeaking sound effect everywhere? It gets used in so many movies, it drives me up the wall.. for example... in Die Another Day.. near the beginning in a section with Tan Sun Moon. Somebody opens a door and you hear the sound effect (I don't know why they used THAT one.. it seems out of place..)

      • I keep noticing the sound effect used over & over that I heard in the last room of Doom. You know...the spooosh sound when it launched another creature in the room every 2 seconds?
    • They probably cannot reuse any sounds due to legal issues with copyright.
    • The do in fact use libraries, they just don't mention it in the "making of" features, because that isn't terribly exciting, is it? :)

      Check this [metafilter.com] out for one hilarious example. :) Of course, there are thousands of less known samples that are still used over and over.
  • Home of the tracker instrument repository.

    Free as in "get it now while it's still there."

    The tracker instrument repository used to be mirrored all over but less and less mirrors can be found. .xi instruments are in samples/ft2. Cheesetracker and Soundtracker can use them.

  • Only half joking... (Score:3)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @01:58AM (#7052502) Journal

    Why not generate them? A sound, after all, is just an amplitude as a function of time. True, you won't get much that sounds like complex real-life objects (say, a cat or a corporate executive) but you should be able to come up with things that sound like simple natural (e.g. a waterfall) or artificial (e.g. a door bell) objects without too much difficulty. More importantly, you should also be able to come up with a wide range of weird, other-worldly sounds that might be useful.

    -- MarkusQ

    P.S. As an added bonus, you may be able to come up with sound families that give you a wide range of effects with almost no storage required.

    • Much less than half joking... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @02:16AM (#7052571) Journal

      (Responding to myself)

      In case you need some ideas to get you started:

      • Simple musical notes -- m(f) = sin(t/f) where f is the frequency. IIRC, 440hz = A natural below middle C, and you multiply by 2^(1/12) for every half-note higher.
      • More realistic notes -- M(f) = (m(f) + c1*m(f*3/2) + c2*m(f*4/3) + c3*m(f*4/2) ... )*k1/(k1+t*k2), where the c's provide harmonics and the k's give a fade out.
      • I'm sure a little googling will give even better formulas...
      • White noise -- w = random
      • Equipment -- w*c1*sin(t/f1) + w*c2*sin(t/f2) ..., where the c's & f's are used to modulate the white noise (because machines typically cycle)
      • Rain -- w*w*w
      • A waterfall -- c1*w + c2*w*w + c3*w*sin(t/f1+k*rand) ..., where you have 1) a steady roar, 2) some random splashes, 3) random, quasi-periodic fluctuation in flow, etc.
      Heck,this could be more fun than writing the game!

      -- MarkusQ

      • Sounds like you could start a webpage on this! On a side note is there a good free (as in beer, and preferably as in freedom) sound editor out there for Windows that could let me do this?

        • Sounds like you could start a webpage on this!

          *Laugh* In all my free time...

          On a side note is there a good free (as in beer, and preferably as in freedom) sound editor out there for Windows that could let me do this?

          I don't know...as the old saying goes "I don't do windows."

          But more to the point, what you'd really want for doing this is a programming language. You could generate the values with a simple loop and then either pump them out to the speakers (/dev/something under *nix, not sure under m

          • I don't know...as the old saying goes "I don't do windows."

            But more to the point, what you'd really want for doing this is a programming language. True. My windows box is just the one with the speakers linked up to it.... But yes programming in direct is an option though Ive seen editors in the past (usually trial-period bleurgh) that allow you to play with these equations - provides easy instant listening rather than waiting for a compile! Thanks for all the help (from everyone)

          • But more to the point, what you'd really want for doing this is a programming language.Well, there are some sound programming languages, for example, CSOUND [csounds.com], which was originally created at MIT, is open source and is being constantly developed for more than 15 years by many people. It's quite complex, but there are GUI and other utilities to make it easier to deal with.

            • *laugh* That's great! Now I know how I'm going to waste my weekend. I'm not all that interested in sounds per se (I just got going in response to the orginal question) but I've got a weakness for oddball languages. I followed the link and by the time I got to:

              ...familiar analog modeling opcodes such as adsr, lfo, vco, and even a moogvcf...

              I was hooked. I have no idea what those "familiar opcodes" do, but I expect to by Monday.

              Thanks!

              -- MarkusQ

      • is that english?

        I had no idea there was actually a formula you could use to generate a 'waterfall' ... wow.

        any other fun ones?


        • I had no idea there was actually a formula you could use to generate a 'waterfall' ... wow.

          Well, if you think about it, the waterfall you see in a game is generated by a formula (or, if you rather, by a whole nested series of formulas)...so why shouldn't the one you hear be created the same way?

          any other fun ones?

          I suspect that there are a whole bunch of easy sirens, whoops, and machine/robot sounds. After a point (and maybe right from the start) the thing to do is try all sorts of combinations and

      • FWIW, 440hz is A above middle C, not below.

        • Thanks for pointing this out. Suprisingly (to me at least), it turns out that it depends on the instrument [aol.com]. For piano, you are correct; for bells (which were the source of my "IIRC" memory) it is as I'd recalled. My brain is telling me there is a good reason for this, something involving resonance modes and harmony, and offering to explain it to me in exchange for coffee...

          -- MarkusQ

      • Actually, I'm currently in the process of writing a Java application for creating sound effects from scratch [vaggen.net], using basic mathematical functions as a base. It is a fork of my original project, which is a game, and I wanted original and free sound effects for it.

        The page shows a screenshot of the gui showing an attempt to recreate the waterfall described in the parent comment, and have for your enjoyment(?) included a wav+mp3 of what the output sounds
        like. Note that some of the parameters are not
        visible in

        • Thanks! My son (almost 2yrs old) was very impressed; he kept saying "Water!" and pressing play. I was (of course) wishing I had the knobs to play with (I was imagining a larger value for f1, and your comment about cubic noise at the bottom of the page makes me think I may have muffed the "pop" term,...). I suspect sound programming like this is a lot like graphics programming: do all the math you want up front, but at some point you have to use your eyes (or ears) to find where you goofed.

          Thanks again

          • As this is a hobby project, I won't make any promises time-wise, but when I've filed down most of the sharp corners of my app, the knobs will indeed be made available. Not the source, at least not while the program is still in beta, but I'll most likely include som instructions on how to implement new functions.

            Because of the special focus of my program, it will not please everyone. For instance, stereo or multi-channel sound is out of the scope of the program, since positioning in space is strictly in the

  • Foley (Score:5, Informative)

    by captnitro ( 160231 ) * on Thursday September 25, 2003 @02:19AM (#7052584)
    Doing creative video production can be a lot like creating a game, and in this particular instance, what you're searching for is pre-made foley.

    A lot of effects can be made simply by rubbing/banging objects together and then tweaking them, e.g., a grandfather clock is a piece of thick, taught cable hit lightly by a tire iron, slowed down 300%, and repeated. A sizeable personal effects library can be made by going around with even so much as a tape/MD recorder and a good mic just getting sounds from anywhere and everywhere. I'd recommend a boom mic if at all possible to prevent picking up background noise. But you might look a little weird doing it.

    For "artificial" effects and maybe a little music, Korg [korg.com]'s Electribe series of synths (EA-1 Analog Synth, ES-1 Sampler, ER-1 Rhythym Synth, EM[X]-1 "Music Production Stations" -- does all of the above to a limited extent) can provide endless resources, when properly played with, at least. I remember being in a crunch for a project and synthing out a perfect submarine "ping" in ten minutes on the ER-1. Obviously, more expensive synths will do more.

    If you're really going for pre-made (despite my lectures to the contrary), try Opsounds [opsound.org] -- Copyleft for audio. Make sure and contribute back, mmmk?

    And of course, Sounddogs [sounddogs.com]. The sounds (and even short-length compositions) are incredibly cheap -- we're talking $0.30-2.00 or so depending on length and license, high-quality, downloadable OR they can burn a CD and send it to you, and it's royalty-free forever at purchase. Considering they merely resell licensed effects, you'll probably find more than a few effects that you're trying to imitate in the first place.
    • well, i think what the orign. asker is looking for are just sounds like 'shotgun going off', 'assault rifle burp', generic 'aarggh!' yell, 'steps on metal' and other quite simple things like that(that are played probably hundreds of times within the game so it doesn't actually matter that much if they're premade because they won't fit in the situation exactly in any case).

      and i'd figure that some mod(.mod .xm .s3m & etc) instrument repositorys have shitloads of them...

  • FlashKit (Score:4, Informative)

    by Paul d'Aoust ( 679461 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @02:21AM (#7052589)
    http://www.flashkit.com -- there are tons of sound clips and music loops with various licenses. I think most (if not all) of them are available as MP3. A lot of them are available as free-with-credits, some are public domain, some have to be purchased.

  • SFX Libraries (Score:3, Insightful)

    by girth ( 40643 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @02:22AM (#7052595)
    There are a variety of stock sound effect cds that can be used. Some are royalty free, others require license for certain usage (need to read the agreement).

    Sound designers, like any other artist, enjoy making unique sounds that fit the usage exactly. It represents their craft.

    Instead of looking for stock SFX cds. Try hooking up with a young Sound Designer looking to get into games. (try colleges/schools with music engineering programs - Berklee, Full Sail, etc). When I was in school, I would be more than happy to work for just a screen credit so I could put it on my resume.

  • Complicated task, no community (Score:4, Insightful)

    by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @02:44AM (#7052663)
    Contrary to what many people may think, a good sound effect is a real art to produce. It takes a lot of knowledge about what sort of baseline noises can be manipulated into what effects, how to do it, a lot of screwing around (in a very directed fashion), and the ability to know when it is done. Each of those steps is a learned skill. Doing them all together in a way that gets results is hard.

    This sort of thing is not similar to OS development - it is more of an art form. Clip art might be something that could be open source, but good art will never be. Sound design is much closer to art than coding.

    Before you disagree, think about good code being usable in as many places as possible, and then think about whether sound effects for your favorite movie or game can be leveraged into every other movie or game and give you the same feeling.

    Many people could produce random noises, but there's no point. "Here's a game over sound. I think it works for most every game I've played, so I'm releasing it."

    • On the subject of sound effects, remember the wilhelm scream?

      http://www.starwars-rpg.net/swfa/issue3/wilhelm . ht ml

      It's a scream from an old western that has been re-used by directors (mostly george lucas) in many movies. If you haven't heard of it before it's fun to check it out and realize just how many times you've heard it before.

      Another sound effect that I'm aware of, but have never read about, is the "creaking door." I don't know what library it's from or who used it first. It's the sound of a c
      • Correction: The effect first appeared in WB's "Distant Drums" (1951) and was later used in a western where a character named Wilhelm belted it out.

        Here's a better link and complete wilhelm filmography:

        http://www.hollywoodlostandfound.net/wilhelm.htm l

      • Another sound effect that I'm aware of, but have never read about, is the "creaking door." I don't know what library it's from or who used it first. It's the sound of a creaky door opening, where the creak hits two distinct tones. I've heard it in more television shows and movies than I can count.

        I know what you are talking about with that door sound, I've heard it used a ton. I first heard it in Myst (it might have been Riven, actually) and have heard it used in a myriad of films and TV shows since the

      • That's a good point. (In general, I find this a neat topic; forgive me if I ramble.)

        The most obvious form of this sort of thing is sampling - think Queen bass lines and huge parachute pants.

        Quake used a lot of effects very similar to Nine Inch Nails songs (which isn't very surprising, considering Trent Reznor worked on sound effects).

        Other artists reuse or contstruct sound-alikes for artistic nods, as you mention. It also is done to suggest irony or absurdist humor (think slide whistles and cartonny-s

  • Coordinate with online musicians: ampfea.org (Score:3, Informative)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @03:57AM (#7052901) Homepage Journal
    You might also get results if you turn to other online forums for musicians too - there's no point asking slashdot.org, when you could spend maybe 10 minutes to find some of the musician communities that are out there, and just ask there.

    Come to ampfea.org, subscribe to the music-bar mailing list, and ask for folks on there to help you come up with original sound effects for free inclusion in your game. There are *plenty* of budding sound designers, musicians, and sound engineer types on this mailing list (music-bar) and more than likely you'll find what you need.

    Maybe you'll even come up with some interesting new directions in sound design for your game engine too?!

    (PS - we have free samples in the ampfea.org /files section, too ... you might spend some time browsing our archives, there are sound effects in there, and more importantly, contact details for folks who contributed such effects too...)

    • Believing that there are no people who program, sequence, and arrange audio through electronic methods reading slashdot is a farce. There are plenty of people (like myself) who do much more than coding or netadmin on GNU/Linux.

      In fact, one of the sole reasons that I still use MS Windows is the fact that I cannot find any decent usable audio software written on any other platform, and believe me I've kept my eyes out for anything somewhat usable for quite a while.

      Feel free to contact me if you need sample

    • --Well, a case can be made that by Asking Slashdot, the ppl that read here get to read posts like yours, and find sites that they never heard of before. ;-)

  • samplenet (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @05:26AM (#7053108) Journal
    Says their samples are 'copyright-free'.

    URL: http://www.samplenet.co.uk/

    lots of drums/synth stuff, but also an 'effects' section with odd noises. Use your favourite sound editor to tweak to your desire.

    They used to have an FTP site where I would often 'mget' loads of wavs, but now it just seems to be http and mp3 files.... Maybe the FTP wavs are hidden away somewhere...

    Baz

  • Creative Commons Licenses (Score:5, Informative)

    by mikeymckay ( 138669 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:32AM (#7053255) Homepage Journal
    I just read an article about Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] and how their license is all about creating this sort of thing. Their stuff seems to be the like GPL.

    Anyway - found this site with lots of Creative Commons Licensed effects - most of which are professional quality as they were used on the author's radio program.

    http://www.leoville.com/sfx.shtml [leoville.com]

    • Careful. There are a whole series of Creative Commons licenses. You need to read the terms in detail to figure out if you can use a Creative Commons-licensed work as part of a game.

      Another problem is people applying the GPL to a sound file without understanding the implications. If that sound file was produced from a sound synthesis program, shipping only the output would be like shipping only the binary of a GPLed program. The GPL says that you have to provide "source code" and defines the source as

  • Lots of sound options (Score:3, Informative)

    by Artful Codger ( 245847 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @08:26AM (#7053664)
    First, since you're just playing around and not developing commercial games, you can use just about anything, depending on the public exposure and your tolerance for licence issues. There is alot of legally-useable stuff out there anyway.

    Your options are:

    Free stuff all over the net. Downside is often the quality may be lower,and you don't have 100% confidence that they can legally distribute the sounds.

    Low-cost CDs. There's always been a alot of LPs and CDs available to the public. Go to any large CD store. I've picked up some great BBC sound effect CDs, and even the effects from Star Trek. Note that most but not all are licenced for re-use.

    Multimedia CD-ROMS - I always see multimedia and clip-art CDR's in the $9.99 bin. Many of these have some reasonable effects.

    High-end CDs (see www.sound-ideas.com) this is what most pro's use (as well as foley). These suckers are expensive!! but the ultimate. This market is dying so they often sell the libraries at a lower price - see their Blue-Plate special.
    By the way, they have a $99 Flash effects CD geared to the Flash professional, which is good value if you use this sort of stuff frequently. Sound Ideas used to have a killer demo CD that was full of pro effects.

    Recording your own. Takes time, but alot of fun. I use a portable MD recorder, then transfer to PC and edit the heck out of them.

  • Sourceforge has a help wanted section. Post in there that you need sound help.

    Put simple sounds in your game. If nothing else just record yourself saying "crash" in a mono-tone voice. Something that proves sound can be added, then get someone who knows sound to do sound.

  • Why do we still use samples? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zemrec ( 158984 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:58AM (#7054794)
    Why do we still use sound samples? It seems to me that a sound engine or chip that could generate sounds by using physical laws to simulate real materials producing sound in a computer would be able to create a far wider range and more unique sounds.

    For instance, instead of recording the sound of a door slamming, the device could simulate a large wooden slab turning on hinges and hitting the door jamb. In most games that have doors slamming, its a prerecorded sound that doesn't vary. A simulation could produce the sound of the door a various velocities and types of material, ie. if you slam a door really hard versus just nudging it, it'll produce a very different sound, and the same goes for a metal door versus a big heavy oak one.

    I have no idea if this is possible, but it just seems odd that we're still using recorded samples, and PC gaming audio technology doesn't seem to have advanced very much, especially with respect to the pace of graphics development.
    • The answer to that question is also the answer to the question, "Why don't we raytrace games realtime?"...

      • Many modern 3D games are raytraced, except that they use a shortcut called a "portal engine." In a portal engine, a cone of rays is traced through several convex "rooms." Normally, rooms are linked to adjacent rooms, but if a room is linked to itself, you can make a mirror, and you can do teleporters in a similar way.

        Learn more about portal engines [flipcode.com]

        And yes, it's possible to simulate sound sources in real time. Often, all you need is a delay line and an FIR filter, and the result is called "waveguide s

    • Why do we still use sound samples? It seems to me that a sound engine or chip that could generate sounds by using physical laws to simulate real materials producing sound in a computer ...

      This is done a lot, but for one thing, doing such physical modelling is vastly slower even than ray tracing (you need to do things like ray tracing but with different effects for every component frequency, and surface effects are complex), for the highest quality effects, and for another thing, there isn't an existing

  • Sonic Mayhem (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, so they arent free, but the guy that brought you the greay music for Quake 2 and 3, and also produced the textures and sound effects for the Unreal * games somewhere along the lines, offers discs jam packed full of music, textures, and sound effects... $50 I think they go for, and you can use them for whatever. Fair price if you ask me... and you know the quality of the stuff before hand

  • Foley Artist (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mugnyte ( 203225 ) * on Thursday September 25, 2003 @12:17PM (#7055551) Journal
    For many years now, sounds for movies and television were created by a specialized studio and a Foley Artist. This harkens back to the days of radio, when sound was the special effects area du jour.

    These days, creating new sounds isn't very difficult, since the investment in a Foley studio has been completed and most of the materials are everyday items: An old pair of shoes walking in various boxes of glass, gravel, tile, etc. A cardboard box of broken glass and screws. An old bakelite telephone for handset noises. Creaking boards, squeaky doors, etc are all kept in a large prop area and rolled into the recording area when needed.

    It can take a long time to put all the environmental sounds of a single scene together, but you'll not miss the poor audio a shot will sometimes deliver from location. Wind noise, planes flying overhead, horribly wimpy explosion pops or crappy gunfire are all part of getting the visuals correct.

    Digital sounds are also used more widely though: Storms, gunshots, car crashes, screams, plus all the alien and ghostly noises we've come to take for granted. Think of how overused the "reversed echo" voice is for Voices From Beyond. People have come to make simple associations between the chosen representional sound and it's source, even if it's totally fake. Most people won't question lasers making noise, space carrying sound, or a silent underwater scene. All bogus, but part of the entertainment. Funny how people will scoff at these libralizations while watching Star Trek, as if the rest of it is even close to reality.

    If you're creating you're own game, sounds are just another piece of the design like drawing sprites or capturing and cleaning up cutscenes. If you're taking photos for good textures, then you can record your own sounds. If you're not using anything realistic at all, just go to a music store and tinker with the electric synths in the corner and bring your tape recorder. Lots of clean funky presets ready for the taking.

    mug

    • Here [marblehead.net] is a nice web site about the art of foley. It takes a bit about the history and how they go about making some sounds. Actually, I think this was on /. not too long ago. Sorry, I'm too tired to look it up.
  • a huge number of amiga iff samples on disks come to my mind =)
  • There are enough little games and screensavers out there that are open source. The tricky part is knowing where to look in the great big sea of code/packages. Maybe someone should put together a simple database of where to get free clips?
  • http://www.findsounds.com [findsounds.com] is a sound search engine. You type in what you're looking for and it displays a list of samples.

    Other sound-sample sites include: http://www.synthzone.com/sampling.htm [synthzone.com]
    http://www.ilovewavs.com/ [ilovewavs.com]
    http://www.thewavplace.com [thewavplace.com]
    http://www.tintagel.net/resources/Multimedia/Audio / [tintagel.net]
    http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/ [a1freesoundeffects.com]

    http://www.modarchive.com/ [modarchive.com] also has some assorted samples.

    • Are all these sounds GPL compatible license - or just 'royalty free'? Some sites allow people to submit wav files, but then you cannot guarantee that they haven't been pinched from somewhere else. Safest way is to 'borrow' from other GPL projects or create your own.
  • maybe check out golgotha collection.
    there is about 9 songs and a lot of sound effects.
    http://jonathanclark.com/golgotha/
  • No one has mentioned the most critically important thing about sound effects: the ear is much harder to satisfy than the eye, so even true recordings of actual real life events GENERALLY fail to sound realistic, even though they are completely authentic!

    For instance, recording someone walking on a sidewalk usually sounds really fake, whereas simulating the same thing by banging (perhaps) two blocks of wood together can sound very authentic.

    For similar reasons, quality movies have the actors record dialog in a studio and dub that sound track on top of the visual shot e.g. outdoors, because actual recording of dialog on location is rarely good enough quality...and a non-expert audience will instantly notice the difference.

    There are a variety of reasons for this that professionals can attempt to compensate for, such as the processing effects of the outer ear, but the bottom line is that Foley (the art of using fake sounds by banging things together in a studio) has always sounded more realistic than actual recordings, in general.

    Professionals can judge when this is not the case, and they can post-process samples to make them sound more realistic, but non-professionals should realize that they are just going to end up with non-realistic sounds, in general.

    But my main point is, don't think that Foley techniques are obsolete techniques of the 1940s. They are still the choice state of the art technique (which professionals augment/enhance with every conceivable other source and technique... but not replace.

    Professionals maintain a huge library of effects, create new ones via software and synthesizer, record new effects in the field for every new movie they work on, post-process everything with software, and still use Foley along with that. Or when time and budget are short, sometimes just Foley. But using just computer without Foley is a low quality last resort; big budget films never settle for that.

    I'm replying days after this was posted, so maybe no one will see it, but hey, at least it's in the archives.

  • Hi, I put a few samples [hermann-uwe.de] I have created a few years ago on my homepage, maybe you can use some of them... All of them are GPL'ed of course... Uwe.

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